Who’s to Act? Perceptions of Intergenerational Obligation and Pro-Environmental Behaviours among Youth

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I was very impressed with this article. There is a well developed solid theoretical perspective. The data and analysis are rigorous. 

Author Response

Reviewer 1

We wish to thank Reviewer 1 for the kind words of appreciation.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper report two studies investigating intergenerational aspects of the fight against climate change among youth samples using the Value-Belief-Norms model. The paper presents interesting data, relatively convergent across both studies and non-negligible sample sizes.

I describe below some elements that should be addressed to improve the paper.

 

The link between intergenerational obligation and ecological behavior is insufficiently justified, and when reading the results, I wondered why we should expect such a link. Authors could try arguing more for why this relationship could be expected.

 

References could be added to make the paper more complete. The work by Koletsou and Mancy https://www.jstor.org/stable/41407073 seems especially relevant as the authors “extends the VBN to more collective elements”.

Two other references might be of interest to reflect the current work on youth and intergenerational aspects relating to climate change:

https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.353

https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462980040304

 

Study 1 data were collected in 2016, but Fridays for future started in 2018. So it might be worth discussing if young people have changed their apprehension of climate change after this date. Maybe studies are investigating this question and could be cited.

 

The intergenerational obligation items formulation used in Study 1 is unclear. In the material, is it written “it is my parents’ responsibility to do something for the environment” (and “it is my grandparents’ responsibility …”), while for the youth it is written “it is my generation’s responsibility”. It is strongly unbalanced, as in the last item it is a whole generation concerned, compared to two/four individuals for parents and grand-parents. I wonder if a mistake occurred in the translation process, as in Study 1 discussion, it is mentioned « referred to their parents’ and grandparent’s generations ». If the word « generation » was not used for parents and grandparents items, I am not sure the results for this concept are interpretable.

 

Only 31 and 22 participants performed the ecological behaviour in Study 1. It is a very small proportion compared to more than 600 participants and should be discussed in the discussion.

On the same idea, for Study 2, descriptive results on the behavioral dependant variable are only in the appendix, and only the mean is presented. It would be interesting for the reader to add in the main text the percentage of respondents who said they did not want supplemental course, the percentage who said 1h, 2h, and 3h.

 

 

Study 1 results : it seems strange that male students hold lower scores of ecological beliefs, but have a stronger probability of engaging in ecological behavior, while in the full model, those two concepts seem positively associated. Authors might discuss this result to explain it (for example, maybe the ecological behavior was gendered?)

 

Minor comments:

Typo in Fig. 1 (awareness of consequences)

Section 3.1.2: is a number missing after « all items used in study » ?

Results presented p.11, it is unclear if external locus of control = powerful others.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

2.1. The link between intergenerational obligation and ecological behavior is insufficiently justified, and when reading the results, I wondered why we should expect such a link. Authors could try arguing more for why this relationship could be expected.

Considering a collective—and more precisely an intergenerational—sense of moral obligation is novel to the study of adolescents’ and young adults’ determinants of pro-environmental behaviours. For this reason, it would be a bit pretentious to make firm hypotheses. To make this more apparent, we added “—a variable that has, to our knowledge, not been investigated yet” on page 2 when first mentioning an intergenerational sense of obligation.

In addition, we agree that the sentence we wrote in the section about collective obligation may have been misleading (“Feelings of collective bonds when environmental issues are at stake are known to underlie individuals’ pro-environmental behaviours”, p. 5), since we further stated, in the ‘theoretical model’ section, that “the role played by perceptions of intergenerational obligation remains open” (p. 6). To make this clear, we rely on two sections in which we explain that although we favour the intergenerational obligation hypothesis, two options are in fact possible.

First, on p. 6 we explain that “On the one hand, young people may hold ‘we are all in the same boat’-type beliefs, and perceive intergenerational cooperation as a necessary step to tackle environmental issues (positive interdependence). In this sense, limiting climate change would act as a superordinate goal that transcends group differences and rivalries (Sherif, 1966). Feelings of collective bonds when environmental issues are at stake are known to underlie individuals’ pro-environmental behaviours (see Fritsche et al., 2018). On the other hand, adolescents may hold "us vs. them" beliefs and think that one generation is responsible to act to limit climate change (negative interdependence).”

Second, we have modified a passage on p. 7 to reiterate this double possibility: “It may be argued that since collective bonds underlie cooperative behaviours (see Clayton et al., 2015), feeling that all generations are jointly responsible may be related to behaviours that will benefit all humankind (Stein et al., 2022). However, it is also possible at perceptions of one’s own generation as responsible may arise from high levels of personal AR, and lead to stronger pro-environmental behaviours, …”

2.2 References could be added to make the paper more complete.

• The work by Koletsou and Mancy https://www.jstor.org/stable/41407073 seems especially relevant as the authors “extends the VBN to more collective elements”.
• https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.353
• https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462980040304

Thanks for pointing these highly relevant papers– they are now cited on pages 3 (Koletsou & Mancy, 2011), 5 (Ballantyne et al., 1998) and 2 (Corner et al., 2015).

2.3. Study 1 data were collected in 2016, but Fridays for future started in 2018. So it might be worth discussing if young people have changed their apprehension of climate change after this date. Maybe studies are investigating this question and could be cited.

We agree that it is important to mention the (potential) impact of Fridays for future on adolescents’ and young adults’ attitudes and behaviours. In the previous version of the manuscript, the first section of the paper may have given indeed the impression that both studies were conducted after 2018 (“e.g., “The last few years have witnessed young people worried about the future protesting (in the street or online) every Friday for a greener planet. Interestingly, some have invited their parents and grandparents to these events instead of demonstrating against older generations (e.g., Carrington, 2019). These young people may see all generations as jointly accountable and responsible to fight against climate change.”). We have thus modified the first section to give a more general account of young people being increasingly worried about climate change.

 

We have also modified the content on the section on page 6 on young people’s perceptions of climate change, by citing two recent studies: “In addition, US high schoolers born in the 1980s and 1990s were found to express a much lower interest in the environment than high schoolers from the previous generation (Twenge et al., 2012). However, from 2018, millions of young people took the streets to express their worry about climate change. Reviewing 51 studies conducted with children and adolescents (aged 8-19), Lee et al. (2002) observed no marked changes in climate change perceptions in recent years but noted that studies on the topic published prior to 2007 were scarce. The authors also noticed marked cross-national differences in terms of children’s and adolescents’ levels of beliefs and concerns. By way of contrast, in an Australian longitudinal study on participants aged 10-11 to 18-19, most participant were found to express a stable or increasing worry for the environment (Sciberras & Fernando, 2021). Thus, it is important to ascertain the extent to which young people of today, and especially those with marked biospheric values, are aware of environmental issues and how those beliefs impact their willingness to act for the environment.”

2.4. The intergenerational obligation items formulation used in Study 1 is unclear. In the material, is it written “it is my parents’ responsibility to do something for the environment” (and “it is my grandparents’ responsibility …”), while for the youth it is written “it is my generation’s responsibility”. It is strongly unbalanced, as in the last item it is a whole generation concerned, compared to two/four individuals for parents and grand-parents. I wonder if a mistake occurred in the translation process, as in Study 1 discussion, it is mentioned « referred to their parents’ and grandparent’s generations ». If the word « generation » was not used for parents and grandparents items, I am not sure the results for this concept are interpretable.

This was a mistake in the text – thank you very much for pointing it to us. In the questionnaire, the items read: “it is the responsibility of my parents’ generation … “ and “it is the responsibility of my grandparents’ generation”. This has been corrected in the text (in Appendix A).

 

 

2.5. Only 31 and 22 participants performed the ecological behaviour in Study 1. It is a very small proportion compared to more than 600 participants and should be discussed in the discussion.

This is now discussed on page 13 (“Third, only a quite small percentage of the participants were engaged in the two behaviours under consideration. “) and on page 14 ("—which was likely to result in a less skewed dependent variable—”).

2.6. On the same idea, for Study 2, descriptive results on the behavioral dependant variable are only in the appendix, and only the mean is presented. It would be interesting for the reader to add in the main text the percentage of respondents who said they did not want supplemental course, the percentage who said 1h, 2h, and 3h.

The following sentence has been added on page 15: “They first answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (43.1%) to whether they wanted such extra courses. In case they said ‘yes’, they were asked how much time each week they were willing to attend such courses, that is less than one hour (14.9%), between one and three hours (37.9%), or more than three hours (4.1%). The two variables were combined into one, ranging from 0 to 3.”

2.7. Study 1 results : it seems strange that male students hold lower scores of ecological beliefs, but have a stronger probability of engaging in ecological behavior, while in the full model, those two concepts seem positively associated. Authors might discuss this result to explain it (for example, maybe the ecological behavior was gendered?)

Note that gender was significantly related to only one of the three dependent variables we investigated (environmental commitment in Study 1). Since gender was used only as a control variable, had only a limited impact and additional models estimated without the two control variables (age and gender) yielded similar findings, we decided not to discuss its impact in detail.

2.8. Minor comments:

• Typo in Fig. 1 (awareness of consequences)
• Section 3.1.2: is a number missing after « all items used in study » ?
• Results presented p.11, it is unclear if external locus of control = powerful others.

These three points have been corrected. Thanks for having pointed them out.

Reviewer 3 Report

I read with great interest the article "Who’s to Act? Perceptions of Intergenerational Obligation and Pro-Environmental Behaviours among Youth". I think that the issue is of great interest for its potential impact and for the scientific literature.

Despite this, some issues need to be considered.

Study 1:

The score obtained by the two actual pro-environmental behaviours needs to be better explained. How were they treated in the analyses? One is an intention to act, the second an actual behavior. There were students with both scores? Please specify.

Authors says “While we could not include all the value items used (but only a few measuring biospheric values)”. Can authors specify why they couldn’t use all the values?

Study 2

A replication of the results of study 1 in a study considering different age participants -even if authors try to explain why they did it - needs a more significant explanation since 5 years passed between the study 1 and 2 – and the COVID-19 pandemic was in progress. There are a lot of studies affirming that the pandemic period pushed young people to engage more in prosocial behaviors and to pay attention to the environment. Any measure controlling for a previous intention to participate or past behavior or influence of the covid-19 pandemic?

In my opinion authors can also consider to split the studies and present only one of them or both of them but separately. The connection between the two seems to be too much forced.

All Figures must be more informative. Please put betas in them.

In the general discussion, the first paragraph is centered on emotions and types of emotions. The reader should argue why emotions where not considered in the model.

I suggest commenting more deeply biospheric values and the actual pandemic and their impact on the willingness to participate. A lot of studies can sustain this connection.

 

Author Response

Reviewer 3

3.1. (Study 1) The score obtained by the two actual pro-environmental behaviours needs to be better explained. How were they treated in the analyses? One is an intention to act, the second an actual behavior. There were students with both scores? Please specify.

We added the following sentence on page 9: “Only three students were engaged in both behaviours.” Regarding Study 1 DVs, see also our response to comment 2.5.

3.2. (Study 1) Authors says “While we could not include all the value items used (but only a few measuring biospheric values)”. Can authors specify why they couldn’t use all the values?

We have modified the sentence as such: “While we did not have enough space to include all the value items used (but only a few measuring biospheric values; see 3.1.1.), the other measures were similar, or improved, in comparison with Study 1”. Then, the following sentence was added in 3.1.1.: “Because the questionnaire was sent to all students, we were asked not to include too long scales.”

3.3. (Study 2) A replication of the results of study 1 in a study considering different age participants -even if authors try to explain why they did it - needs a more significant explanation since 5 years passed between the study 1 and 2 – and the COVID-19 pandemic was in progress. There are a lot of studies affirming that the pandemic period pushed young people to engage more in prosocial behaviors and to pay attention to the environment. Any measure controlling for a previous intention to participate or past behavior or influence of the covid-19 pandemic?

In my opinion authors can also consider to split the studies and present only one of them or both of them but separately. The connection between the two seems to be too much forced.

Given the exploratory nature of the study (see our response to comment 2.1), we still believe that presenting these two studies together is highly informative, since our objective is to trigger interest in the concept of intergenerational obligation (this is explicitly said on page 8: “All these links will be explored in a first study, and a second study will be conducted to examine whether results are confirmed.”) We find quite compelling that similar results are found in studies conducted not only before and after the large-scale climate protests (that took place mostly in 2018 and 2019 (see our response to comment 2.3), but also before and after the COVID-19 pandemic started.

However, we do agree with Reviewer that the potential impact of the latter factor should be discussed in more depth. For this reason, the following sentences were added on page 13: “Another important fact that must be taken into account is that Study 1 data were collected before the COVID-19 pandemic started. Personal experience with COVID-19 appears to be related to a stronger motivation to support environmental policies and taxes in the US (Wong-Parodi & Berlin-Rubin, 2022); climate perceptions and anti- COVID-19 behaviours were also found to be linked (Latkin et al., 2022).” However, because Study 2 questionnaire was sent to all students in our university, and was described as measuring their attitudes toward whether or not they wanted more courses in sustainable development in their curriculum, we were not able to add questions about their personal experiences with COVID-19.

3.4. All Figures must be more informative. Please put betas in them.

Given the high number of links we think that a figure showing only significant paths is more informative than a figure with all coefficients (those are given in the text).

3.5. In the general discussion, the first paragraph is centered on emotions and types of emotions. The reader should argue why emotions where not considered in the model.

Although we did not include measures of emotions in our study (data were collected in a high school and in a University, and in both cases we had space limitations), the variables we investigated (self-efficacy, locus of control, and so on) are related to the emotions we refer to in the discussion (e.g., helplessness, fear). By doing so, we hope that scholars interested in the topic would go on with the study on adolescents’ and young adults’ pro-environmental behaviours, by investigating more collective variables (e.g., intergenerational obligation) in relation to individual and collective emotions.

3.6. I suggest commenting more deeply biospheric values and the actual pandemic and their impact on the willingness to participate. A lot of studies can sustain this connection.

Thank you for this suggestion. We have now added the reference to an important article that makes this argument “This is in line with recent research that argues that biospheric values and awareness of the consequences of climate change are linked to efficacy beliefs, and ultimately mitigative actions, a relationship that interestingly might hold for both climate change-related actions and responses to Covid-19 (Bouman et al, 2021).”

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I think the answers the authors gave are appropriate and improved the manuscript

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you. I think the paper has improved even if the explanation of these two studies put in this paper do not convince me.